Flickr photo courtesy of Chuck "Caveman" Cover The New Year means I've been brainstorming and pitching story ideas like a fiend. Which got me thinking about the idea generation process. I wrote a post on 50 Ways for Writers to Find Article Ideas, but I'd love to hear how you came up with some of your brightest ideas.Did you scour community bulletin boards until you found that cool new band? Get a press release that sparked an idea for a service piece? Write an essay based on an experience from childhood? Here are a couple of my recent articles with an explanation of where the idea came from:
- Hammer Time, The Boston Globe Magazine: I'd emailed some other ideas to the editor when she mentioned needing profiles for the DIY home issue. Around the same time, a friend invited me to a local arts festival, where I picked up a brochure about Artisan's Asylum. Bingo!
- 'The Only Time We Have Together is Right Now,' PARADE Magazine: I read a one line blurb in a member newsletter about someone who'd been named president of a local Wish Upon a Wedding chapter. What's that? I wondered before Googling it. Once I read the nonprofit's story and discovered that they'd recently launched, I knew it was a story I wanted to tell. The editor at PARADE expressed interest, so the publicist put in touch with the couple I ended up profiling.
- Five Ways Your Boss Bugs You - And How to Respond, AOL Jobs: Last summer, an editor asked me to write the opposite story: how workers unknowingly bug their bosses and how to break the cycle. A reader emailed me a rant about his boss. "What about the many ways that bosses annoy the @%#& out of us?" he wrote. I mentioned this to my editor and suggested I write a follow-up story.